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Children’s Bonding with Parents and Grandparents and Its Associated Factors

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Abstract

Previous literature has focused on the importance of both parental and grandparental bonding. However, few studies have been conducted to measure children’s bonding with parents and grandparents simultaneously, especially tested by the same instrument that offers more comparable results. Therefore, we studied the relationships between parental and grandparental bonding using the Parental Bonding Instrument (PBI), and possible associations between these bonds and sociodemographic variables in 905 Chinese children aged 10–14 years. Children’s bonding with mother, father, and grandparents were positively correlated, and the final mixed-effect model showed that several sociodemographic factors (e.g., gender, only children, parents’ marital status, and mother’s occupation) were associated with parental and grandparental bonding.

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Acknowledgments

This study is supported, in part, by National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences grants R01-ES0188858, K02-ES019878, and P30-ES013508 to the Jianghong Liu. And thanks to the sponsors of Graduate School of Shandong University and University of Pennsylvania, School of Nursing for my exchange visitor program. No conflict of interest has been declared by the authors, and no portion of the work has been or is currently under consideration for publication elsewhere.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Nursing, Shandong University, Shandong, People’s Republic of China

    Yuli Li & Fenglin Cao

  2. Schools of Nursing and Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, 418 Curie Blvd., Room 426, Claire M. Fagin Hall, Philadelphia, PA, 19104-6096, USA

    Yuli Li, Naixue Cui & Jianghong Liu

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  1. Yuli Li
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Correspondence to Jianghong Liu.

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Li, Y., Cui, N., Cao, F. et al. Children’s Bonding with Parents and Grandparents and Its Associated Factors. Child Ind Res 9, 551–564 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-015-9328-0

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